THE grotesque empty civility of Westminster – as false as Michael Gove’s politeness or Boris Johnson’s tousled hair – was laid bare on Thursday by Dawn Butler, the Labour MP for Brent who, with determination and dignity, refused to lie to the House of Commons and was expelled as a result.

She knows, I know, and all of us know – indeed Boris Johnson himself knows – that he is a serial liar. Butler was therefore absolutely right to refuse to pretend otherwise.

I am all for civilised and courteous debate but I am also all for telling the truth. That is what politics should be about and when a political institution becomes so corrupt and broken as to enforce penalties for honesty yet allow falsehood to flourish than it has forfeited the right not just to respect, but to continued, unreformed, existence.

The archaic British political system has been in accelerating decay for a long time. It is inherently conservative (with a small and large “c”) self-protecting and self-deluding, leaning as it does on a largely unwritten code originally meant to secure by voluntary means honourable and honest behaviour.

This so-called “gentleman’s agreement” underpinned the establishment and operation of devolution and, it used to be believed, would guarantee its continuation.

However, today, such a code, even if it ever really existed (Britannia, as Winning Ewing once cleverly observed, ruled the waves by waiving the rules) is no more than a smokescreen, hiding all sorts of chicanery and corruption while permitting preening self-satisfaction from those who sit on the Government side of the “mother of parliaments”.

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Johnson is no gentleman, despite his affectations, and therefore any agreement with him or the Government he leads, is worthless. He and they lie all the time and I know that because I have heard and seen them do it often, particularly with regard to Brexit.

A prime example can be found in the new UK Government “Command Paper” about the Northern Ireland protocol, published on Wednesday.

The whole of the first section of this document is a barefaced attempt to rewrite history and to blame the difficulties that now exist on everyone but the people who negotiated and agreed it – that is the UK Government and especially Johnson and his negotiator “Lord” Frost.

In fact, it goes to far as to claim that it is the last UK Parliament which caused the problem by its insistence on outlawing a “no deal”. This, says the document, “radically undermined the Government’s negotiating hand” and led directly to the current impasse.

Yet those responsible not only never drew attention to that at the time, they took a very different stance on what they had achieved.

On Christmas Eve last year, when the deal was finally reached, Frost himself tweeted that he was “pleased and proud to have led a great team to secure today’s excellent deal with the EU”. He added in a second post “It ... restores Britain’s sovereignty in full. EU law ceases to apply; the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice ends; there is no alignment with EU rules; and our Parliament sets all laws for our country once again.”

No mention there of his “negotiating hand” being “radically undermined” nor of the fact many of his boasts were contradicted by the protocol, to which he had willingly agreed.

Johnson, as ever, went even further telling anyone who would listen about the “wonderful”, “oven-ready” deal and informing the House of Commons that he had “taken back control of every jot and tittle of our regulation , in a way that is complete and unfettered”.

NO ifs and no buts in that, even though he was speaking in a chamber to which telling a lie is a resignation offence, according to both the unwritten rule and the written Ministerial Code.

There were also no reservations in the constant re-assurances he gave on the ground in Northern Ireland about there being no checks and no borders despite the fact he was being contradicted at the time not only by EU officials but also by at least one of his ministers.

He was also being contradicted, of course, by his own Government’s impact assessment of the Withdrawal Agreement which, back in October 2019, did identify some likely consequences of the protocol.

Johnson, however, kept quiet about them given that the December 2019 election turned on the issue of whether indeed Brexit had been, or would shortly be, “done”.

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The rest of the UK Government document published this week is a similar farrago of untruths and false claims including those that appear to offer a solution to the present problems.

There isn’t a snowball’s hope in hell that the EU will agree to renegotiate a treaty signed only months ago and the idea that such a renegotiation would be able to remove the involvement of the European Court of Justice in any shape or form is just fantasy.

The only way forward is to implement the protocol in full, taking advantage of the offer of further alignment with the EU on things such as veterinary standards to overcome problems as they arise.

In other words to stop lying and stick to their word.

In a country with emptying shelves, at least partly as a result of Brexit (calling all the current difficulties Covid-related is simply another lie), with huge questions about Johnson’s pandemic leadership and with a shredded international reputation, recovery can only come by telling the truth and then acting on it.

The truth for Scotland is that there is a better way to be made in the world and it is within our grasp. That means that our representatives’ thankless presence in the UK Parliament is now only of use in making our voice heard and refusing to be silenced.

I feel sorry for England having no such option, but at least the courage of Dawn Butler on Thursday now gives that country a small glimmer of hope, too.